Marx believed that although capitalism develops the productive powers of human societies to

historically unprecedented heights, it does so in ways which are also disabling,

exploitative, and undemocratic. In these fundamental ways, capitalism is a contradictory
social system, with endemic tensions, political struggles, and potential for change. Capitalism is
disabling insofar as this way of organizing social life distorts and obscures real historical
possibilities for social self-determination.

Socially empowered as never before to remake their world and themselves, people under
capitalism are simultaneously prevented from realizing the full implications of their socially
productive powers and the fuller forms of freedom these powers might make possible. Within
the context of capitalist commodification and the ideology it supports, historically specific forms
of social organization and activity take on the appearance of objective, necessary, natural,
universal conditions.
Marx referred to this kind of disabling mystification as ‘alienation’ or ‘fetishism’.

Insofar as these appearances involve abstracting particular elements out of the constitutive
relations through which they are produced, and representing them as if they were self-subsistent,
reconstituted entities, this ideological mystification may be understood as a sort of retification—
the practice of conflating abstractions with reality.
Similarly, this is the significance of Mrs Thatcher’s famous claim that there is no
alternative to ‘free market’ capitalism. To the extent that we understand ourselves as isolated
individuals, we confront our social environment not as our collective social product, but as an
objective constraint on our individual choices. Social life becomes something which happens to
us, rather than a collective way of being in the world.

This is an instance of a powerful critical insight derived from Marxian theory: to the extent that
people understand existing social relations as natural, necessary, and universal, they are
prevented from looking for transformative possibilities, precluded from imagining the social
production of alternative possible worlds.
In short, they may abdicate their collective powers of social self-production. Ironically, then,
the unprecedented development of productive capacity under capitalism has as its
historical correlate the disempowerment of collective human producers.

On Marx’s view, capital is the result of socially productive activity, the creation of value by
labour. Viewed as a ‘thing’, capital itself has no productive powers. But viewed as a social
relation, capital is productive only as an accumulation of previously expended labour power, set
in motion by newly expended labour power. Yet, because capitalism is characterized by private
ownership of the means of production, as owner the capitalist controls the production process
and expropriates its product—the surplus value created by labour (i.e. the product of labour
above and beyond that required to sustain the workers themselves).
In Marx’s understanding of capitalist exploitation, the process and product of socially
organized labour are subordinated to private property and incorporated into the accumulation of
capital. Of course, the capitalists’ ability to control the production process and expropriate its
product depends upon the successful reproduction of their class-based powers, and the
insulation of these powers from more democratic, collective forms of decision-making. The third
strand of Marxian critique thus highlights the degree to which capitalism creates private social
powers located in a separate ‘economic’ sphere of social life, effectively off limits from
explicitly ‘political’ public deliberation and norms of democratic accountability. This is perhaps
best understood in terms of an historical contrast.
Pre-capitalist modes of production such as feudalism involved the direct coercive
expropriation of surplus labour by the dominant class, landed nobility whose social powers were
simultaneously economic and political. Should serfs fail to yield surplus labour to their lord, the
social significance of this was not simply a private deal gone bad but rather a direct challenge to
the political– economic order upon which the lord’s social position rested. That the lord would
respond by deploying the coercive force at his disposal would not have seemed
extraordinary in a social context where economic and political aspects of social life were fused in
this way.

In a modern capitalist context, however, it is relatively unusual (although certainly not

unheard of) for employers to use direct coercive force as an integral part of their extraction of
surplus labour. Rather, workers are compelled to work, and to submit to capitalist control of the
workplace, by what Marxists often refer to as the ‘dull compulsion of economic life’, the
relentless daily requirement to earn enough to pay the rent and put food on the table.
The direct intervention of explicitly political authority and directly coercive force within the
capitalist workplace is the exception rather than the rule. The social powers of capitalist investors
and employers are ensconced in this depoliticized and privatized economic sphere, understood
not as intrinsically political powers but as individual prerogatives attendant upon the ownership
of private property. By virtue of being understood as attributes of ‘private property’, these
powers are made democratically unaccountable (it is, after all, nobody else’s business what each
of us does with our own private property).

Further, because of the state’s structural dependence on private investment, government is

effectively compelled to serve the long-term interest of the capitalist class (not necessarily
congruent with that of individual capitalists). Failure to create the political conditions
perceived by capitalists as a business-friendly climate would result in capitalist investors
sending their capital after higher profits elsewhere and leaving the government to preside
over an economic crisis which could well be politically catastrophic for incumbent office
holders. Insofar as politicians of all major parties are acutely aware of this structural
dependence upon the maintenance of a business-friendly climate, a range of possible policy
orientations (which might be perceived as threatening to the profitability of private
investment) are effectively precluded. This implicit veto power over public policy is yet
another sense in which Marxists have argued that capitalism is undemocratic.
Capitalism as a system of social organization, as a way of life, presupposes as part of its
structure both a privatized and depoliticized economic sphere and, correspondingly, a public,
political state. Further, this separation is embodied in a variety of cultural practices and
representations in which we appear to ourselves as private individuals, workers, consumers,
rights-bearing citizens, confronting a pre-given world in which we must choose the most
efficient means for the realization of our private purposes.

In these ways, then, capitalism effectively privatizes the social powers of investors and
employers, lodging these in a privatized economic sphere, understood to be separate from
the sphere of politics, public affairs, or the state. Even as capitalism creates these unequal
powers based on class, it masks those powers behind the apparent equality of citizens in relation
to politics, the state and law and behind the appearance of the economy (where inequality may be
more obvious) as if it was an apolitical arena where questions of power can hold no meaning.

To identify capitalism narrowly with the economy—and therefore Marxism with

economic analysis—is to miss the crucial point that particular forms of political and cultural
organization and practice are bound up with capitalist social reality, and are implicated in
political struggles over the reproduction—or transformation—of that entire way of life. None
of this is incontestable in principle or uncontested in fact. A system of social organization
premised upon privatized social powers is a system fraught with contradictions and tensions.
Historical materialism highlights these powers, along with their structural and ideological
defences, in order to subject them to critical scrutiny and to identify historically real
possibilities for progressive social change
Conclusion

For Marx, capitalism was not to be confused with markets or exchange, which long predated
capitalism. Rather, capitalism represented a form of social life in which commodification had
proceeded to such a degree that human labour itself was bought and sold on the market. One
of Marx’s central insights was that this situation presupposed the development of historically
specific class-based relations and powers: the concomitant development of capital—socially
necessary means of production reconstituted as the exclusive private property of a few—and
wage labour as the compulsory activity of the many.

Under the class relations of capitalism, direct producers are not personally tied to their exploiter,
as were slaves in bondage to their master or feudal serfs bound to the lord’s estate. In a real
historical sense, then, capitalism frees workers to treat their labour as their own property.

However, this freedom is complemented by a peculiarly capitalist kind of unfreedom. Insofar

as means of production are under the ownership and control of a class of private owners, workers
are compelled to sell their labour to members of this owning class in order to gain access to those
means of production, engage in socially productive activity, and secure through their
wages the material necessities of survival.

Marx’s critique of capitalism hinged upon the claim, intelligible within the context of his
dialectical theory of social self-production, that capitalism simultaneously involves
historically unique forms of human freedom and unfreedom, empowerment and
disempowerment. Relentless competition among private capitalists results in extension and
elaboration of the social division of labour and continuous innovation is the organization of
production processes

Reference

Tim Donne et al. (2013). Theory of international relations: Discipline and Diversity.
Oxford University Press. Chap. 8. Pp. 53.